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Michel Thomas - where are they now? | ||
Tags: Audio-lingual | Michel Thomas | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| magictom123 Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5595 days ago 272 posts - 365 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 9 of 26 16 April 2010 at 9:39am | IP Logged | ||
Indeed, the Michel Thomas Vocab courses headed this way where Rose Le Hayden 'teaches' vocab to native speakers, whose responses seem to have been pasted in. Quite ridiculous and spoils the authenticity of the course. I original MT courses I've look at have been excellent, and despite the complaints people have about the students, they never really distracted me (well, maybe the annoying lady on the French Foudation course with her ohh la la's but even then, it didn't bother me much) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5671 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 10 of 26 16 April 2010 at 9:51am | IP Logged | ||
I agree completely. The contributions of the "students" in the French Vocab course were a deleterious superfluity. It was clear from the start they were fluent already, and had no need for that course. The vocab course missed completely Michel Thomas's own realisation that the students on the recordings are supposed to be interacting with the teacher, making mistakes (along with the listener) and grow in their knowledge as the course progresses. As he said himself, the listener is meant to feel part of a group of three students, and with the vocab course I did not have that feeling at all. EDIT: To be fair, Rose Hayden is not the teacher on the French Vocab course. For a start, she is American, and the teacher on that course is English. I believe the teacher's name is Helene Lewis. Edited by Splog on 16 April 2010 at 9:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 11 of 26 16 April 2010 at 1:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Also worth noting that Ginny also said on the forums that the new courses took a week to record and massive stretches are edited out, because (as she put it) it would be boring for the home student to sit and listen to long passages of the teacher trying to correct the recorded students' pronunciation or simple errors.
She completely and utterly missed Thomas's point: an audio course that is a recorded class goes at the speed that a learner can cope with -- it is the ultimate "pacing" mechanism. If you edit out parts of a live class recording, then you have something that is too fast for the learner (evidence: not even the learners getting one-to-one tuition in the studio could have handled the pace on the final CDs). The fact that the students were taking so long to grasp the concepts being taught shows one thing: they weren't being taught right. There was a fundamental problem with the teaching, and editing was nothing more than a crutch to get any old rubbish on the market and make more money. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5393 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 13 of 26 17 December 2013 at 5:39pm | IP Logged | ||
Yeah, I was about to say I'm sure they all just took their check for voice over work, stuck in on their resumes and went on their way. I do like the aspect where it feels like you're sitting in a class with a grizzled old professor who's taught the course so many times he can do it in his sleep (any maybe does from time to time). It's a shame that the newer courses felt that the passages with little mistakes needed to be edited out to save the listener from "boredom" and that they opted to use native speakers for the vocabulary courses. I know you're supposed to gauge how well you're getting it based on how you compare to the smart and the less gifted students but if all the mistakes that the students make are edited out or a native is acting as a student I can only imagine how discouraging that would be for a learner. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5567 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 14 of 26 17 December 2013 at 6:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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The Vocabulary courses wouldn't work with real students - unless you doubled the CDs as
there is too much material to take in and get through. Nor do I think that the native 'students' are superfluous as you have a native spoken example before reinforcement by the tutor. What is annoying is the pretence that it is a live student with all the 'Well done' 'That's right'. Paul Noble's courses manage to do away with the students and they work as well as the Michel Thomas courses, even if they are very basic (still, the German one manages to cover the case system). Given that the two primary complaints about the original MT courses are a) the students and b) Michel Thomas' Polish accent and gum sucking, I would have thought having native speakers and a tutor who speaks clearly would be a bonus. As to Hélène Lewis - I personally think she is charming, calming and has a nice voice. Given she can actually pronounce French rather than choking on her tongue as Michel Thomas does, I don't see the problem. Personally I got a lot out of the MT Method Vocabulary courses - I found them to be a great workout of structures and idioms as well as a vocabulary course. Edited by Elexi on 17 December 2013 at 11:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 15 of 26 17 December 2013 at 9:17pm | IP Logged | ||
As far as I understand, correcting grammar mistakes or incorrect words is still considered an important part of the method. There's also the factor that with pronunciation it's harder to compare ourselves to other people, and in general I'm not sure it was a factor while choosing the bright and less bright student. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4830 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 16 of 26 17 December 2013 at 10:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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I remember the male student on the Advanced Spanish (I think it was) was clearly an ac-
tor, trained in the Laurence Olivier school of delivery. He was at least easier to listen to than the poor chap on the beginners course, whom one wanted to send home, with a note to his mother, saying that in future, he should only come to school after a good night's sleep and a proper breakfast. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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